Lean Startup Conference 2014

In the spirit of being lean, I am going to keep this post short.

Thank you.

( Well… it turns out my boss was “not happy” with the short post)

It was a rainy, cold day in San Francisco California where the annual Lean Startup conference was being held.  There was a storm on the horizon and to quote the morning news, “BIG storm is coming. The big storm will be big. And now for more on the coming big storm and how people are preparing for the big storm. Up next we have updates on the big storm.”  

But neither rain or cold kept Intuit Developer from working our magic and talking to conference attendees about QuickBooks, the QuickBook Apps Center, APIs and opportunities for entrepreneurs. 

As you may know, Intuit takes a lean approach to our marketing and development efforts and we support the lean business model. To further support the Lean Startup community, we provided several entrepreneurs from across the country with scholarships to come to the conference and learn more about running a lean company.

If you missed the conference here is what you need to know:

• Have you read this book? 
• No – read it!
• Yes – Read more books

In all seriousness, the practice of lean methodologies is very valuable and continues to prove to be a successful way to build a business and improve processes.  I really like this quote from Tim O’Reilley, ” It’s ultimately an answer to the question: How can we learn more quickly what works, and discard what doesn’t?”

The Intuit Developer platform is designed to reduce risks and unknowns.  The new Intuit Developer site allows you to quickly make requests against the API Explorer then dive in and make calls to the QBO sandbox environment.  After you have a little code, you can move to a production environment immediately, so you can start testing with beta customers. Once you are ready to move to Apps.com you submit for review and our tech team takes care of the rest. All of these iterations are a streamlined lean approach that enables you to improve your small business application to include a valuable integration with QBO. 

If you thought 2014 was a big year for Intuit Developer and the QuickBooks Platform then just you wait.  2015 is going to be way more exciting… stay tuned!